Introduction

MyDigitalSSD is a small company based in upstate New York, but most SSD manufacturers claim the company resides as a thorn in their ass.

MyDigtialSSD isn't accountable to shareholders that demand high-profit margins. The company's earnings calls are direct emails from the founder to those with previous purchases to announce sales, special buys, and presale openings. There isn't a massive marketing budget by design; it keeps prices low. Because of that, many sites don't even review the company's products.

When the BPX Pro announcement hit the newswire, the company opened up pre-orders for early adopters. Since the announcement, SSD and flash prices shrank. Instead of taking the money and running, MyDigitalSSD released new pricing details and refunded every preorder buyer. This behavior gives MyDigitalSSD a faithful following.

Before we dive into the new BPX Pro we first have to talk about its predecessor to fully appreciate the series. The MyDigitalSSD BPX came to market during the longest flash shortage we've ever had. The drive shipped with Phison's first NVMe controller, the PS5007-E7 and MLC flash. Phison's founder and CEO forecast the flash shortage; he was one of the first to talk about it publicly. Before he let the cat out of the bag, he stockpiled massive amounts of 2-bit per cell MLC flash in anticipation of the shortage, and before the fabs turned nearly all production over to slower 3-bit per cell TLC.

The MyDigtialSSD BPX was the last consumer SSD not from Samsung's Pro series to utilize MLC flash. It was also one of the first low-cost NVMe SSD at a time when nearly every other product in the category cost significantly more.

Other companies, like Corsair, Patriot, and Zotac released SSDs with the same controller and flash but they don't have the extremely low overhead of MyDigitalSSD. The competition couldn't remove the thorn. The BPX built a strong market position that lasted until the MLC ran out.

The new MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro looks to build on the success of the previous generation. The company already set aggressive pricing that takes a sword to the HP EX920 pricing but only slices a few dollars off the Adata SX8200. The market has changed quite a bit since the original BPX. SSD prices have dropped nearly 50% in the last year. Today we'll see if the current conditions allow the BPX Pro to stick it to the competition.

Specifications

CrystalDiskMark Performance

Expected Release Data: Mid-October

The BPX Pro is shipping in three capacities already, and a large 2TB model will ship in mid-October. We welcome the "new" four-capacity lineup that includes a very large capacity option and omits the traditional 128GB class that no longer makes sense from an economic standpoint.

The sequential read performance spikes at 3,400 for all four capacities. Sequential writes scale with the capacity. The 256GB drive achieves just 1,100 MB/s and grows in 1,000 MB/s with each size to 2,100 MB/s for the 480GB and 3,100 MB/s for the 960TB and 1920TB models.

MyDigtialSSD measures claimed performance with CrystalDiskMark, so the random numbers come in the form of throughput. In our testing, we measured around 13,000 IOPS at queue depth 1 and for most desktop workloads, that's the number you care about.

Even though the BPX Pro is the first product with the new Phison PS5012-E12 (E12 from this point forward in the review), we've shown performance previously in tradeshow coverage and preview articles that detail the architecture and hardware specific features.

The design is straightforward with the E12 controller and Toshiba BiCS FLASH 3 TLC memory. The controller features end-to-end data path protection. MyDigitalSSD didn't enable the user encryption modes on the BPX Pro so you will not have accelerated eDrive or TCG Opal support.

Pricing, Warranty, And Endurance

BPX Pro pricing starts at just $74.99 (240GB) with drives available on Amazon and MyDigitalDiscount.com. The 480GB sells for $129.99, and that grows to $259.99 for the 1TB model. The 2TB currently has a tentative price of $569.99 with that size shipping in the coming weeks.

The BPX Pro series carries a 5-year limited warranty. MyDigitalSSD is not trying to gouge anyone with the endurance coverage. The 1TB model gives users 1,665 terabytes written (TBW) under the warranty terms. That's more than 1,000 TBW more than the HP EX920 and Adata SX8200 in the same 1TB capacity class. The range moves steadily from 380 TBW (240GB model) to 3115 TBW (1920GB model).

A Closer Look

To keep prices low and offer shoppers a strong value, MyDigitalSSD uses a blister pack instead of a box, foam holder, paperwork and so on. The blister pack allows the company to give you a small screwdriver and a fine threaded screw most often used to secure M.2 SSDs. For the first time that we know of, MyDigitalSSD also offers users a case sticker so you can show your fandom for the BPX Pro SSD.

The drive itself is a 2280 design, 22mm wide and 80mm long. The 240GB and 480GB fit all of the components on one side, and the 1TB and 2TB are double-sided. This only matters in two older notebooks that we know of. Those systems had chips under a short riser M.2 slot, and you couldn't install double sided SSDs. The Lenovo Carbon X1 Gen 1 was one of them (we have one in the lab), and Dell released around the same time had the same issue. Companies have learned not to put additional surface mount components under a slim riser, and we haven't ran into the issue in at least four years.

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